Ahh! Liberty Meadows is FINALLY back on the New Release shelf at the comic shop! Don’t get your hopes up, though. It’s not Liberty Meadows #38. It’s the Image Firsts edition of Liberty Meadows #1. For those of you not familiar with Liberty Meadows, allow me to break it down for you.

Liberty Meadows was a long-running newspaper strip. Creator Frank Cho started collecting them in comic book format. This is the first of those.

Liberty Meadows is an animal sanctuary. It’s not your typical animal sanctuary, however. The animals talk. And they are freakin’ nuts! The first issue gives us the set up.

Brandy Carter is an animal psychiatrist. She’s got long black hair and big boobs. If you’re at all familiar with Frank Cho’s work, you know he knows how to draw pretty ladies. Frank Mellish is the very nerdy veterinarian who is head over heels in love with Brandy, but he stumbles on his words whenever he is around her. In this issue, he has just hired on. Also, in this introductory issue, we meet Tony. Tony is the resident maintenance man who is quite prone to accidents. We also meet Julius. Julius owns Liberty Meadows and he loves to go fishing.

The animals living at Liberty Meadows all have one sort of mental problem or another. There’s Ralph, a midget bear that used to work in the circus. He’s always doing dangerous stunts and pulling practical jokes. Leslie is a hypochondriac frog, and is Ralph’s sidekick in all his stunts and pranks. Dean is a sexist pig who drinks and smokes too much. Truman is a young duck that was a victim of an oil spill. Truman is different than the others in that he is sweet, innocent, and very polite. He is always calling the humans “sir” or “ma’am.” The last resident animal we meet in this issue is The Cow. The Cow is evil and suffers from Mad Cow Disease. We also get to meet Khan. He’s not really a patient at Liberty Meadows, but he’s a HUGE catfish that lives in the pond and is always giving Julius a hard time when he goes fishing. There are two other animals at Liberty Meadows that we don’t get to meet in this reprint. One of them is Oscar. Oscar is a wiener dog and is Truman’s best friend. Oscar is the only animal that acts like a normal animal. He doesn’t talk. Later on in the series, the animal sanctuary takes in Mike. Mike is a raccoon with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Liberty Meadows is chock-full of moments of unpredictable hilarity and craziness. It’s a real shame that there hasn’t been a new issue since 2006. Please, Monkey Boy Cho! Quit drawing big-boobed Marvel women and get back to the animal sanctuary!

Liberty Meadows is one of my favorite comic books of all time. If you can sit through an entire issue and not laugh out loud and not have your sides hurting after you finish, then you clearly have no soul. If you can’t find the humor, I seriously feel sorry for you. If you’ve never experienced Liberty Meadows before, then I strongly urge you to pick this Image Firsts edition up. It will be the best dollar you have ever spent in your life! Ever!